¶ Intro / Opening
James TerryGet to hear this, Jim.
No. Hey, everybody. just getting started here. Thanks, everybody, for… Joining us. I love all these otter AI note-takers, that's cool.
James TerryNo, is that getting popular?
So yeah, got people coming in. If you don't mind, in the chat, just let us know if you can hear us okay. Everyone just missed a riveting story about.
James Terryquiet you.
James. Yeah. I'm not exactly sure what… what just happened. In the green room! They created a picture taken, and it ended up with him saying that… He's always small in Dan's eyes, so… I think he was referring to…
James Terryon my part. Boy, Harry missed it.
Yeah, I mean, yeah.
James TerryI love the angle that, that Dan's got on his… on his screen right now.
Well, thank you. I have it set up really high, so… to hide the… the neck fat, so you have the, double chin, so you have it a little higher, so…
James TerryI thought it was that you were always looking up As visionaries often do.
Well, I do that also. My, the cabin picture of me.
James TerryJust…
Just thinking about the future.
Pence of Dan.
I can't grow a beard, so that's why, so I have to have my camera up high.
James TerryShould grow a mustache. Sebastian on this meeting, none of us need to even attempt a beard. Look at that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's good work.
Right.
Good work, Obi. Beautiful.
James TerryBeautiful facial accessory over here.
Alright. It does feel like a… it does feel like a natural lead-in. to our guest. Hey, Natalia, thanks for coming on. Sebastian.
We haven't driven away, everybody.
No, people actually stayed, so… maybe we'll do a spin-off about… Whatever the hell it was you guys were talking about. I forgot what it was, I was just waiting to get in to start office hours number 10, so…
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James TerryDouble digits here.
Thanks, everyone, for joining us. I am Harry Kerbo, the, Senior Director. of paid social media marketing here at Sync. My counterpart on the Google side, James Terry. is here, in front of many leather-bound books. And as always, the most handsome man… on the internet, who did use the word potting as a verb today, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Dan Lott.
It's happening, it's happening.
Yeah, and more on that in a minute. But before we get into all that, I do want to introduce our guest today, Sebastian Cortez. He is from the Sync Frontline support team. And honestly, the guy that I go to… When I don't know what people are talking about. So, he is, a wealth of knowledge on the, on the Sync CRM. I think you said… have you been here since 2019? Is that right?
Yep What's going on?
Very cool.
Nope.
Alright. Whoa! Waylon's AI assistant announces it's sentient.
James TerryThat's great.
Hey, Waylon's assistant, I hope you're having a great day.
James TerryWe better welcome it or something. We don't want the AI turning against us.
Yeah. Yeah, this will eventually devolve into talking about the goof from the Matrix, but we're not there yet. Yeah, so, Sebastian, if you don't mind, like, just kind of tell us a little bit about, you know, what you do on the frontline team, and… You know, that kind of stuff.
Yep, so, so I'm kind of like a Tier 2, support, It's given me a chance to really, to really expand my knowledge base about what, you know, how all of our products and features kind of interact with each other. My… I would think my main role is, you know, whenever clients call in and they have an issue that they report to us, you know, a bug, a request, something like that.
it kind of makes its way up the flagpole, and to me, where I'll kind of vet it, I'll make sure it's got all the details it needs. You know, if it's a bug, I'll make sure it's got everything that the tech team needs to look in to verify it's a bug, and then, you know, work on fixing it. And then, you know, for me, it makes its way over to our tech product team, to… to do whatever the ticket Requests to be done.
Very cool, yeah, I appreciate you coming on, man. Cause we got a lot of good questions. That are more on the support side. We also got a lot of questions about… kind of lead flow at this time of the year. And so we'll… we'll talk about that as well, but… I see Natalia's question, it's also… Similar to another question that we got from, Justin.
When he signed up, just around, videos. Both questions are kind of around, using videos and communication, right? So, Natalia said, how do you include video message or video inside of emails? In Orlando… Look at that. So, is that… Is that something that can be done? Like, what… are there best practices around it? You know, what would you say to Natalia? Other than the link that Orlando just posted.
Yeah, so context on the link that Orlando posted, that's kind of a… that's one of two workarounds for including video and email, because,
a lot of email carriers don't like it if you just… if you just embed a video in your email. If they see that, your email is much more likely to… to land in a spam or junk folder. So that's why… That's why we don't have the option to just embed a video in the email, or I actually think we do have a button to do it, but our system sanitizes that email before it actually sends to the client, and we remove the embedded video.
And that is to just give the email a better chance at landing in, you know, the inbox folder, as opposed to spam or junk. The two… the two workarounds we have, one of them is in that… that link that Orlando posted, where you kind of just… take the first frame of the video, you take a screenshot of that, you upload it into your email, and you hyperlink that image to lead to, like, the YouTube video of that, yeah, of that video.
That's something that, that, you know, if you include 4 or 5, 6 of those, then that also kind of ends up having the same effect as embedding video in your email, but if it's just one, you know, your email's most likely still going to go into the inbox. The other option is with our video messaging feature, where, You record video from within the platform. It's housed in our video library, in the CRM, and then, there's an option when you're sending email or text, kind of towards the bottom of that
window that pops up where you type in what you want to send. There's a little video hyperlink, you click on that, it opens up the video library, you select the video you recorded, and then you can, you can send it from there, and… And, you know, I don't know exactly what kind of tech magic, uploading video that way
I don't know why that works, and embedding wouldn't work, but but I do know the video messaging feature, is… is… it was specifically designed in a way to kind of, bypass that… that check that a lot of email carriers have for embedded video, so… yeah.
Well, they…
You know, it's…
a lot of time on that video feature. I remember, like, it was years ago, and so… and it works, it works good, and it's… it's… it does the…
No. Sounds terrible.
But I guess, I guess, because you gotta upload in, like, I don't know, whenever I go to, like. Whenever I go into, like, the Google system and have to, like, upload videos, I'm like, I'm not gonna do that, it's too much work. So… so I guess the shortcut is just doing, like, a screenshot, and then…
like, doing that.
I agree.
The other one works great, if you have time, or if you're looking for additional functionality, I guess.
Yeah, because that's one of the limitations with video messaging is that you have to record the video in the system. So if you do have something that's already uploaded to YouTube, you know, use… just, you know, using the screenshot, hyperlinking the screenshot, that's probably going to be easier. But, you know, if you have something you just kind of want to record in the moment, then video messaging is probably going to be… yeah, it's probably going to be better for that.
So many options, though. So that's good.
James TerryAnd what a, an unsung piece, like you had said, you know, one thing I heard just now was. If you put it in this certain spot, like, we sanitize it, so the goal being that it ends up in an inbox and not a spam folder, because once you send it, you don't know where it…
where they're seeing it, where it's being received, and so just such a background piece that we're focused on to say, we know where you want this to go, spam doesn't do anybody any good, here's something we do that I don't think we yelled from the rooftops or anything, but just something that was implemented to say, hey, you worked on this, and we want to make sure people see it, right?
Yeah.
Well, and the… the image… the image with the hyperlink is pretty standard practice. That's what MailChimp has. You know, so the emails that I do for this session, where we include the… Replay of the previous.
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That is a image with a hyperlink to the YouTube channel. So, I mean, honestly, if you think about it from a, like, a social standpoint, like a marketing, like a social media standpoint. Not social, I don't talk to people, but… Like a social media standpoint, it's more valuable to you to get that person on your YouTube channel, or your Facebook page, or, you know, your landing page. Than it is for them to watch something within an email.
So, yeah, I think that's pretty standard practice. And again, like, MailChimp used to have an option to upload a video. That does not exist anymore. Their video option is just a placeholder image with a link. So I think that's pretty, pretty standard. And it's funny that you bring up all the spam stuff, because I remember… I feel like video messaging was done around COVID.
During when that was just starting up, you know? And at that same time, it's been through so many iterations of, like, text message compliance, and spam filtering, and, like, the Can-Am, and all this stuff, you know? Anyway. It just took me down memory lane, I'm thinking of Doug.
Yeah, I think that was one of the last, team, like, company meetings that I had in person in the office before we started working from home. I remember that, too.
Yeah.
Yesterday. Memory lane, yes.
Memory lane. Alright, let's see. And so another question that we did have, kind of along the same lines, but I think when we talked about these before. before the session, Sebastian, you said that this may be more of, like, a feature request? And I don't know if you touched on this or not just now, but Justin's question, again, around videos in the library was… It would be good… it would be nice if they could upload videos to the library to send out, versus having to record them.
in the… I guess… do they do it in the app? I'm not even sure where you record it.
Yeah, so, so you actually use your, you use microphone and, camera permissions to record the video, like, in your browser, on your computer, or you… You can do it in the Sync Agent app, but it works a little bit differently. It works a little bit more like Snapchat there, where you record a video. at the time you're composing the text message to attach to it, and then it doesn't go in the video library.
Does it automatically put a cat face on you?
That's another… that's another thing we can probably send up as… as.
Alright, yeah, let's see. Orlando, I bet Orlando's on board with that. But, yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to derail things, I apologize.
But, but yeah, so you can, you can record video, on the app or on desktop. On the app, it's… I don't want to say it's slightly more limited, it just kind of has a different… I think it was more designed for a different use case than when you can sit down and record something a little bit longer on the desktop, so…
So yeah, that's good. I mean, we appreciate the feedback, absolutely, Justin and Natalia and everybody, for submitting questions, so that is, something we can definitely pass along as feedback to the product team. Jemima asked, how do you go back and find emails and text messages that have been sent to clients? Is there an easy way to do that? Orlando mentions the lead profile. Yep.
That's probably the easiest way. You know, anything that you send to a lead should show up in the lead profile in the activity tab. We do have some filters, you know, if you're looking from top to bottom, you see the activity tab, there should be a filters button, and you can specifically choose to deselect everything and just do text messages, emails, property alerts, and it'll just show a… you know, probably a slightly smaller list, because by default, I think we have everything checked, so…
I think looking in the lead profile is definitely the easiest. Technically, you, you know, we have a communications inbox, too, off on the left-hand side of the CRM. We do technically have a sent folder in there, so anything that you send should show up in there, but… we don't have the best filtering options there, so it just shows, like, if you send a mass email to 100 leads, it's gonna show 100 emails in there. So, you know, going into the lead profile is definitely… easiest.
Let's see, Angela… is asking, recently changed my brokerage, is there a way for the templates to be updated with the new signatures, so I don't have to edit every time going forward? So I think, is that talking about, like, auto tracks or emails going out? Is there, like, a central place to change that email signature that gets attached?
It… it depends. So, if it is auto-tracks, if it's email templates, And you actually created the template and included your signature in there, you would have to, unfortunately, individually edit each template that that's set up in. If it's just, you know, whenever you click to create an email and you see your signature in there, that's housed in your profile and settings. We have, if you click on your name in the top right, and you go to the profile and settings in the drop-down menu,
That takes you exactly where you need to be. There's a little signature box, and… You can, you can edit it there, and then anytime you manually create an email, you get a mass email set up, then it'll have the new signature instead. But, you know, going back to with, like, templates and stuff.
the template just kind of works with what's inside what you've created, so you would have to go in there to change it. And each template would be kind of like a… Separate, so you'd have to go into every template, unfortunately, there. So, yeah.
James TerryAnd… Actually, on that, if I could jump in, Angela, I'm glad you brought this up, because this is something, like, it, you know, doesn't happen a lot, but when it does happen, as far as a brokerage change like this, like, say… I'm just gonna make a couple up, right, as examples, but if somebody goes from, like, Keller Williams to eXp, or, you know, whatever it might be.
Let your account manager know, and let us know about that, because we have, like, branding on your website, and our team specifically, the search team and the digital advertising crew. will take time and go through, you know, your Google profile page, for example, and make sure, like, oh, the website
button on your profile is still sending back to a Keller Williams, you know, page, or something like that. And just find some suggestions that you might need to update this. We can't update all of them for you, because we don't have just to keep with that example, access to your Google profile. But just making sure the branding is updated and looking through some of that digital,
you know, everything you've got out there in the digital space to say, these are a couple of items you might need to check, because a lot of that stuff gets buried, and you might not think about it all the time, to your point of having to go through and update every single thing. And yeah, there's stuff within the sync dashboard, but a lot of it's just out there in the ether as well, right? So, something we don't get notified of a whole lot, to think, like, oh, I'm changing brokerages.
Let me tell my lead generation team about that. But, From an online lead gen perspective, it's something we want to be able to make sure is still in line with your branding as you move forward. So let us know if that, as those things happen.
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Yeah, I think.
Yeah, that is… Nice. I was just gonna say, that is a good call-out, because, you know, like, if you're running team listing ads, that's based off of your office ID, and if you change brokerage, if there's a change in that in any way.
James TerryYou know, that'll remove all the listings from the ads if we don't know about it. Or there's also…
you know, Google is really cracking down on suspensions. That seems to be one of their KPIs, this… This… this year. So…
James TerryAnd they want to make sure that branding is consistent, right, and that nobody's with eXp as they move forward, and not still claiming that they're with Keller Williams and trying to pull, you know, misleading clients and things like that. So, thank you for bringing that up. And I'm glad to say you've gotten it all changed up. Good stuff.
Yeah, there is, and this is, you know, Angela, you said you've gotten it all changed, but for anyone else who might need it, it sounds like a lot, but we do have a pretty streamlined process for it on our end. So if you just email the support team and you say, hey, I changed my brokerage, what do I need to do? You know, we have a template with a few questions for you to answer, we send to you, so there's a little bit of back and forth, but,
But, you know, that template automatically gets you in contact with our MLS team, and they help you update all that. So, so it's fairly streamlined. It sounds like a lot when you just kind of say everything that you need to update.
James Terrydate, but…
But we can absolutely help you with that, yeah.
Very cool. And can you, let me see if I remember the support number. 8… starts with an 8. Oh, it's right up there. 855-246-2717.
Yeah, I guess I'll also…
James TerryYes.
What a great guest by me. Or support at SyncPro.com. Yeah!
James TerryTaking time to type into the chat.
Okay.
James TerryActually, taking time to type into the chat reminds me… We didn't ask everybody, where they're from. The…
Oh my god. We know you're from Atlanta, James.
James TerryNo, I was gonna change it this time.
So feel free to do that if you want. And Angela said, is this… is there a daily routine to stay on top of the database that we can follow? Can you email us? I know, just, briefly, we have a lot of free training options. That you can take advantage of, so there's… John Marone's Agent Blueprint, which is a 6-week training course that goes over… Everything, you know, from the generation of the lead to the setting the appointment and the scripting, all that good stuff.
There's this wonderful… Soon-to-be podcast. Now, just webinar series. Office hours. Oh. So, you know, you can take advantage of that. There's a lot of archive trainings, the support line that, is in the chat right now, the email address that's in the chat right now, so, you know, we… one of the big differentiators, I think, between Sync and other… Competitors is, You know, just the access that you have for free training, and then also the support side of things to talk to an actual human being.
You know, that understands what you're trying to do, and that… talking to someone like Sebastian, who's been there for 6 years. And, you know, I've seen multiple iterations, so take advantage of that, and also sync you. Which is a live 3-day training That we hear rave reviews about. It's… I think the next one is… one may be going on here soon, but I think the next one's in Atlanta. So you can find all that at synccommunity.com.
James TerryYeah, and .
I'm gonna ask… Are you talking…
Online can be good.
Alright. Well, I was gonna ask Sebastian, like, the question that was just asked, that seemed like a pretty common question, like, somebody is kind of like… Like, what do I do? Like, I'm sort of… I'm extrapolating, like, maybe they're overwhelmed, like, I don't know, like, where do I… who do I call, what do I do, like… I assume you get that phone call a lot.
Yeah, we did.
what… what do you… like, what is the… you know, John Marone gives the… the 6-hour answer, but what's the, you know, the 6-minute answer to the question?
So, I would… I would definitely say that You know, obviously support has a little bit of insight, but we're primarily focused on the tech support side of things, so we might not be able to give you the best insight. That being said, you know, just working at Sync, we hear a lot about, you know, the agent playbook, we see… we have, our saved filters that are… that are designed in a way to where you literally just, to start your day.
You know, you go to your agent launch pad, you start with those saved filters, you call who needs to be called, you follow up on reminders that need to be followed up on that day.
I do think reaching out to your account manager is a… is a very good, thing to do in that situation, because I think they have some, some, documentation, like, I think there's specifically a PDF that we have called the Sync Agent Playbook that kind of tells you what what Sync's path to success looks like, using our CRM, what you should start doing every day, you know, every couple weeks you should maybe do this, when you call somebody, what kind of, you know, we have a little bit of a,
what are they called? A, a.
Look, the scripting? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Sorry.
So, you know, there's a little bit of a script in there that you can follow, so, you know, I don't think I have that PDF, although maybe it is something I should ask, you know, an account manager for. Maybe I can circulate that through the support team so that we can have… I don't know, something more that we can provide to… to account manage… or to clients, rather than just saying, you know, start by calling your account manager, but…
But that is currently… the best answer we have is to reach out to your account manager, because they do have access to a few more resources that the support team doesn't. So yeah.
Yeah, there are all these different filters and stuff like that, and it's… it's very complicated, and Well, I know we have, like, yesterday, we had our, product team like, talked about, like, what are they doing for the month? And they're, like, rolling out a whole bunch of great stuff for the month, and then a lot of it always has to do with identifying who are the people to call, like, who are the best people to call, and they're constantly refining it, making it better, so that
you know, when you have 5 minutes or 10 minutes to call your leads, or half an hour, like, we're trying to identify… we're making changes on our… in our department, too, but they are also. So, yeah, talk to your account manager.
you know, I don't know when you started, but there's probably a different place, like, oh, the agent-ready leads versus, you know, P1, or whatever they are. So, yeah, talk to your account manager. We're constantly, you know, the tech team, the product team is constantly, you know, working on, you know, refining that and honing in on who are the best people to call.
Yeah, and the account manager also helps you if you do want to sign up for some training with one of our trainers, your account manager is a good point of contact for that as well. If you want to go to Sync University, your account manager can help set that up.
you know, and of course, calling to support, we can kind of get you in, you know, started with that as well, but I do think the account manager… this is one of those things where that's… that's kind of what your account manager is there for, so they can definitely help you out, with… with getting more guidance on. on how you should be working the system, where you should start, how you can find success with it. So, yeah.
Well, I think that is going back to what I said about the level of support that you get from Sync, you know, it's not just…
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It's not just a line that… you know, you can call into with people that can help on the tech side. We have people that specialize in that. That can help you with that. But if you have questions around scripting, we have the account manager who can kind of be your hub to get you in contact with people. If you have questions about your marketing campaign, your account manager can set up a call with
you know, one of us that are on right now, and we'll have a dedicated call with you, and, you know, talk for an hour about your campaign, and strengths and weaknesses, and that kind of stuff. I mean, even as you… purchase sync. There's a whole team that gets everything set up in the back end. There's a whole team that teaches you how to do the basic functions in the CRM before you graduate to your account manager, so… You know, I talk a lot about the changes that I've seen at Sync.
Over the last 10 years, but I do think that is a substantial one of, you know, we've really gone from, get as many leads as we can, like, that's still… Get as many good leads as we can, and we've put… we've even pushed cost per lead up over the years. Intentionally, to get better leads. Still within reason. You know, but You just have all these differing levels of support that you can take advantage of, so please do. I lost my train of thought, I'm not sure if those two connect or not.
James TerryWho knows?
But I did.
James Terrythe question was, like, what do I need to do next, right? Or, like, where am I at? And with several dozen people on this, you know, listening in right now, there's no… Harry, to your point, there's no one-line response that we have for that.
the account manager can look into your dashboard and say, oh, it looks like your contact ratio's not, or, you know, your follow-up's not where it needs to be, and they can say, like, have you been spending time in the launch pad, or do you keep an eye on this? When I look at the lead's dashboard, I filter it in a certain way. Depending on if the client I'm talking to's been live.
you know, been with us, or the campaign's been live for 3 months or 5 years, right? And so, say, like, here's how I look at and prioritize those things, but it's so… case-specific, and so that's why that answer has to be, like, somebody's got to look in and dig into your dashboard to be able to answer that question most effectively, right?
Yeah, I think the timing is really important. Like, how long the site has been around, because expectations are… if you've been around for a year and a half, my expectation of what I'm gonna see in your CRM and your pipelines is different than if you've been around 4 months. And that's a totally different conversation, even, you know, based on… Like, a lot of it at 4 months is probably… You know, you should be seeing some signs of positive movement.
Where at a year and a half, like, you should have some leads that have closed, most likely. And that maybe is a follow-up thing, but we have training for all of that. And the big emphasis… I've picked up my train of thought now. The big emphasis over the past 10 years has been to identify
you know, yes, it's a numbers game. We want to get as many good leads in as we can and convert those as quickly as possible, but we also want to do things, you know, incremental gains in those… in that numbers game. can mean a lot. So, surfacing people who have been in the database for a while, who are taking important activities, you know. there's a lot of focus on that right now. There's new things coming out. So, utilizing your account manager, the training team.
I did post the, Success Playbook link. In the chat, as well. So that is… Yeah, Angela, that's a good thing to use as just kind of a starting point. For a daily, daily routine. We did just get a question from Craig. Craig said, any recommendations or successes with lead conversations? About the new requirement… For a buyer-agent agreement for showings.
So if I understand that right, that is referring to… One of the changes that came from the multiple lawsuits, I believe, of… You know, you need… I… To work with a buyer… thank you. Yeah, to work with a buyer, they need to sign an agreement with you.
First. So I have some rudimentary thoughts on this, and then somebody can fill in with some more concrete things, but… I do think that that lawsuit makes providers, like, sink even more valuable, because… You look at someone like a Zillow or a Realtor.com, You're getting that lead. Much, much further down the pipeline, like, down the funnel. than you are from a sync lead. Of course, the trade-off is the time it takes to close it.
But I've always felt that… Those, changes to the way that To the way that, that… Agents and buyers have to behave. is beneficial for someone using Sync. Because you are capturing that person. you know, at the beginning of their search. So, I mean, that's… That's my… I mean, the Charleston sale… is…
you know, likely an example of that. Daniel, I know you haven't talked about that yet today, but I mean, but really, it is.
It likely is, right? You know, an example of… Of that. So I don't know what you guys think. about that, and I… I think there have… I feel like… I may be making this up, but I feel like we did something with one of our partners. to incorporate… Buyer agreements into the system when this happened?
James TerryLook at you, Sebastian.
I'm trying to… I'm trying to think about it, because I know that… that was… It was…
It was bandied. bandied about.
James TerryI knew it was… there were steps made to simplify it, right, because it was made as a requirement.
Does Orlando know? I know Orlando's in the crowd, maybe he'll… he'll…
Wow.
I, I…
Wow.
I think what you're talking about there is the SkySlope integration.
Yes!
Yeah, so… so we have… we kind of… because we had that in our system for a while, kind of in a different spot, but then I think when the NRA lawsuit happened, we… it was… it was a little bit after we had introduced the deals feature. Which, which I think… You know, kind of helps with that, because it makes tracking Those transactions in the platform a little bit easier.
But, but we also moved the Skyslope integration to that deals, dashboard, so it's… instead of having to, like, go through your profile and settings, click on SkySlope, and, you know, go over there. now you just kind of click the actions and the deals dashboard, and you can go straight to SkySlope from there. It's not a direct integration, but we kind of moved things around to make it a little more streamlined. It, and, and I, I think… I… yeah, I think that's what you're talking about, right?
I'm just watching Orlando misspell Sky Slope. Let's see, third time's a charm.
Skylobe.
Everyone watch the chat!
James TerryAnd I know that it would be mentioned, like, the question, any recommendations with, successes for lead conversion, came not long after we were talking about some of the, the classes and the everything that's available from Sync. I know the links were posted in here for SyncCommunity.com, but one that wasn't mentioned specifically is the online conversion day, where they talk about going through… it's all about, I think it's, what, 3 or 4 hours, and the power hour and the calling.
But that's a big part of it, and it's a… it's really the place for those kinds of questions. And I look to seeing if Orlando got the… SkySlope spelled right, but Online Conversion Day is a great resource for this specific case, right? For this kind of a question.
Yeah, I'm looking for…
James TerrySure, Orlando, autocorrect.
I'm looking for that. That link. Here's the Sync Community link. That also, at the bottom, has a, one of the training webinars that I think was recently updated. Was the essential training? series that I think is done, or it is done by our training team. So, if you go to the bottom of that page. Past the beautiful picture of 3 certain… Beautiful people. You'll find the essential training webinar resources, which is recordings of those, of those trainings.
So yeah, I mean, my overall take on that… It's something that, We always used to talk about, when we talked about.
James Terryalong, you know, in the past, how, like, contractions in the housing market. I think a lot of that stuff benefits the…
The stronger teams, you know, the more established teams with the better processes, because… You know, a lot of the… a lot of teams were likely doing something like this Already. You know, and it's just interesting to watch, like, as… From COVID, I know that so many people became realtors, and, you know, now it's just kind of contracting some. It seems, naturally. I know my dad became… He was an HR rep, and he got his real estate license during COVID.
Wow. I did not know that.
He was a terrible realtor. I don't think he sold anything.
Terrible HR rep.
He did a great HR rep. Great HR rep. Okay. You can check it, there's lists.
Well, should we talk about leads? Harry, is there a question about leads?
Whoa, Dan. That was literally.
Seasonality?
He's literally what I was about to talk about.
Okay.
Wow. Get out of my head. We did have some questions, a lot of questions, really, around leads, lead flow, one of the ones that I saw in particular… that I thought, was interesting was around… False appointments? So, people setting appointments. I'm wondering if… So, one of the things that we've seen from leads, specifically from social. is… so, team listing ads are listcast. In this case, is that we ask a question of, do you want to tour this home on that ad?
If they say yes, It does… it creates a showing for noon the next day. We have heard feedback around… These being, you know, kind of ghost appointments, or incorrect appointments. I see the disconnect, you know, as we look through the whole pipeline. I do see the disconnect of, you know, that person is saying, yes, I'm ready to tour the home, they don't know that a showing's being created at…
At noon, so there is a disconnect in the follow-up. Clients usually call to confirm the appointment. The lead doesn't know, about the appointment. Even with that confusion, you know, our data has shown that those leads that say yes are much more likely to set an appointment than those that don't.
But it's creating too many appointments. So, I'm not sure if that was specifically what that question was talking about, but we do have a change in the works right now, to adjust that so that the showing request… Is not created, but it does still show up in the, same places that it shows up in now. So we do… that is some common feedback that we get, we get that here.
And we're making a change to address that. Just wanted to let… everyone know… I'm sorry, I don't have the specific list of questions pulled up, so I don't know specifically who asked that, but, if you are on there, or if you are seeing that, we are addressing that.
Yeah, I just wanted to comment on that also. So it's both on the Facebook side and the Google side. And, so, I guess Facebook, Google, on the Google, or on… just on the general, we didn't ask that as part of the, registration flow. And now we do ask that question, as of, a month ago. And so… on Facebook, we've been asking for a couple years, and I think people… I think there might have been some more false positives, like if people
saying, yeah, I wanna… I wanna look at the house, or, like, not… so… so Harry… on that side, we're getting too many, and so Harry has made it so it's gonna be… you're gonna get fewer of those by changing some of the verbiage on the… actually, I'm not sure if this is… correct me if I'm wrong, Harry, but you're gonna make the verbiage more, kind of, restrictive, so it's gonna be, you're gonna get more serious, like, only serious people are gonna say, yes, I wanna do it.
And then, It's gonna not set an appointment for the next day, it's gonna be more, it's gonna be a… Property alert.
Property Inquiry.
Property inquiry. It'll show as a property inquiry, so it'll just show…
A note in the property that they signed up on. But yeah, I mean, this is an example of… We're actually dialing back the number of showing requests that we generate because it's not accurate. You know, so… We're not beholden to… Saying, like, oh, you're gonna get so many showing… we actually… we are looking at this kind of stuff, and we are making changes based on your feedback.
And then, on the Google side, or just on the site side, as part of the registration flow, I guess around a month ago, it was, the new flow was enacted, and… most leads come from Google, I would say probably 3 quarters to 80% come from Google, so that's why You probably have noticed more leads, because we're asking the question.
do you want to tour this house? And at one time, do you want to tour this house? So we're asking those two questions, you have to press little buttons. So you're getting all these leads. Again, like, people are inundated because we never asked this question before, but it's a very obvious question to ask, it's a very good question to ask. Shows a definite… a greater intent to, you know.
want to tour a house if they actually explicitly say, yes, I would like to tour this house. But, again, same with on the Facebook side, I… the, the product team is, you know, experimenting with different wordings and stuff like that, just to hone in on who exactly are the people who definitely do want to tour a house by, you know, making the language more restrictive, or making the buttons… I think maybe one of the buttons is pre-checked or something, I'm not sure what it is, but…
They're experimenting and doing a lot of testing just to see what Is going to result in you know, producing a list of leads that definitely want to tour a house, and definitely should be called as soon as possible. And that's… that's kind of the, the goal. And, I think they're doing a good job with… with that. And it's a work in progress, and it's… it's always getting… it's continually getting better.
Greg Park! In Utah! One more question, data… What is Sync's data and average time? from Lee… well, I want to say one more thing about the showing request. I am excited… For this, because even though… like, if you think about the flow. The client is getting notified that the lead wants a showing at noon, so the follow-up is not the standard follow-up. The follow-up is, hey, I'll see you at noon. And it seems like a lot of times the leads are saying, you know, who are you, weirdo?
So, even with that happening, Those leads are 5 times as likely to set an appointment. So, if we keep the notification, like, it will still fall in contact requested where it is now. I think it does merit… contact requested, because they've taken that extra step that we've seen is more likely to set an appointment. It's just now the follow-up is going to match with the leads and, you know, what the lead expected. So I think it'll really… I think it'll help.
I think it will increase actual showings by not creating the showing. So… yeah. It was deep. Yeah, look into the, the lake. What do you see, Dan?
Can I… can I answer a question about seasonality on LeapFlow, Harry? Do we have that one?
Hey, nope.
On the list?
How can you say, I'll see you at noon without… Right, yeah. So… If you look at, if you look at the development of this kind… so Sync, I always say, is an iterative… platform. So creating the showing request… a long time ago, we didn't have all the dashboards that we have now, and we also had a lot more trouble getting leads from Facebook into the site. We do that through the real verified text now, which brings a much higher percentage of the leads onto the site, and…
you know, lets them interact with the site. So we created the showing at noon to alert a client that Someone had expressed that interest. Again, this was years ago. Now we have all these… the new dashboards. We do a much better job of surfacing that… that activity, so we don't need… That's showing requests anymore, and it is a more accurate representation of what it is, and it's based on Feedback from, from clients. Dan?
Do you want to answer Craig's question, or do you want to talk about seasonality?
What was the question? I don't want the knowledge of the day, Seth.
Yeah. Handsome… the most handsome man on the internet gets questions read to him.
They have to cut off. It's tough, it's so…
It's hard, yeah, no, it's hard, yeah.
When it reaches a certain age, Harry, you can't see it.
Yeah!
a little…
Yeah, I know, I know. Ow.
James TerryToo high up.
That's what I was thinking about today, like, is this my… is this my midlife crisis? Like, some people buy a Lamborghini. I grew a mustache, and… Started a lightly attended Q&A webinar. You know, I don't know. I don't know. Well, I'll tell you in 10 years. So Craig asked, what is Sync's data on average time from lead to closing? So I can talk about this. I can talk about a lot of things, but I can talk about this, too.
Yeah, I don't know. You can… I don't know the answer to that. It varies! Actually… Yeah, it varies. I know we always say, like, Harry will say some stats, but, you know, we're… we also… some of… like, we have different products, and then different ways you can, you know, sign up for Sync, and then one of them gives us a lot of visibility as to the closing dates of leads, and when the lead was generated.
And… You know, we see somewhere it's 2 weeks, you know, from… the… maybe not the closing, I guess, but the… If it's…
I saw one today that was under 20 days.
It's under $20, so it's…
Under.
Under. So it's… Because it just makes sense. If somebody is searching, and they look at a… Well, of course, the example we'll use is the Charleston house, the most expensive house in the history of Charleston, who they just looked at a house on our site, and then…
Who generated that lead?
That was Jeremy.
Oh!
How'd come about? Yes!
I didn't know that!
And, like, it was within, like, 3 weeks, or it was, like, it was under contract within 10 days. So… or, you will also… because we also have visibility in this stuff, it's like, or, it's somebody who's, like, 7 years ago registered, and then they finally decide to buy a house. They were… they've been busy, they haven't been, looking for houses, so 7 years passed, but… you know, on that, I don't know, Harry, if you, or James, if you have some… some stats, but…
it can go, you know, it can be anywhere, and it's just based on the, you know, it's just the… they're just like regular people, you know? Do you need to buy a house now, or can you wait 5 to 8… 5 years?
7 years.
7 years.
James Terry7 years. I know Harry will have some… some stats. I was gonna say, like, we take… steps and measures towards trying to bring that date, you know, that down closer, right? And the way we do that on the search side, anyway, is By not avoiding… But by supplementing campaign, we don't want to avoid broad market search terms, but we want to supplement the campaign with more granular terms, like, as Dan was talking about with that Charleston lead.
the lead was searching for historic homes in Charleston. And the client didn't say, like, I want to focus on historic homes. They mentioned Charleston, and we went in and dug down and said.
Charleston Historic Homes gets search volume, performs well, like, people look for this kind of thing, and so we'll look into gated communities, you know, in certain markets, Las Vegas, there might be high-rises, get a lot of search volume, so we'll dig down into some of those more granular, and then we also use, radius targeting to say, okay, within Atlanta, for example, right? Homes for sale in Atlanta could be pretty broad, and people might be pretty far from a buying decision.
But, if they're searching for homes for sale in the Walton School District. for example, they're further along in that, or at least that's the theory, right? By the time they're… they know where their kids are going to school, they know the price point in that area, and we can look into Atlanta and say, okay.
here's areas within Atlanta that get search volume, that have a good cost per lead, that convert well, and we'll add those to the campaign proactively. We don't have to have conversations. We know if a Walton School District lead comes in. it is in Atlanta. It is an Atlanta lead, which was what was requested. So we'll take measures on our side to try and drill down and find that traffic that's searching in your market.
that is closer to the buying decision. Now, I don't have, again, the stats towards, here's the number, you know, the average is 3 months or whatever, but but those are some of the steps that we take. To… to try and… Improve that number as best as we can.
But yeah, and that's another thing, is, like, Harry mentioned, just how, like, maybe foregoing some cost per lead just to get better leads or something like that. Like, at least there's… there's now an ongoing emphasis towards, like, identifying
Which, what are the ones that sell? And just… Just eyeballing it, like, a lot of it's, you know, it's, you know, we don't have enough data, because, like, it's, you know, some clients, like, will take the leads out of the database and put them in another database, so we don't know if who's… which one's sold, so we can't tie it back to the ad group, in Google. But so now we have some visibility because, well, for other reasons, and then…
You know, just… just, you know, a brief analysis of it shows that it is the neighborhood ad groups, it is the niche ad groups. They're the one… even though, like, those are a small percentage of the leads that we deliver, like the neighborhoods, the Walton School District. But those… there's been a lot of… These neighborhood ad groups, and that delivered
acquisitions that delivered actual closings. And so, that… it goes into, like, the… micro-targeting, hyperlocal micro-targeting, and how that, you know, those… those aren't gonna be most of your leads, but those could be your best leads, and those are the ones that close faster, because they are close… they're… Down the funnel, you know? Or up the funnel. Down the funnel.
Yeah, as we keep watching these stats, it'll be interesting to see what, you know, what closes over the longer term, because it would make sense that someone searching for a more general like, CitySearch would just take longer to convert. But yeah, I mean, you hit on it in terms of… You know, a specific expectation of… You know, when leads close. There's a lot of obstacles to us.
being able to generate that information. I mean, you just think about… how different people use the CRM, how different people use the pipeline. I've seen, you know, sometimes closed means don't follow up with them. In a pipeline, and that skews all the data, you know, if somebody has a lot of those, so… Over the past few years, we worked to identify people who we thought used the pipeline in, you know, the way that we would expect it to be used. We segmented those people, created Oh, Waylon. Oh…
Is the AI leaving us?
James TerryThe AI is…
Did I accidentally.
We're done. But, I mean, there is a lot that, that, so we, you know, we did segment those people, we did create the data, I mean, we saw that… what we basically saw Was that you should get closings, and you should expect closings in the first year. Those will probably come from search leads. Because of what Dan… You know, just mentioned, those people are actively searching, they're… They're likely on a shorter timeline than, say, a social lead who's being served the ad proactively.
But what we did see… so we would expect closings in the first year. I believe the guaranteed sale program was based on… you getting… you know, you're getting the amount you invested in sync at least back in year one. And then, in year 2, we would expect more sales, so I think 2 to 3 times what you saw in year… In year one, and what we saw in that analysis was While search leads will probably generate your first sales, social leads catch up. Towards the tail end of year one and year…
too, in terms of, like, closings. So, that… But it depends so much on follow-up, what tools you're using. I mean, I know we had a client a while ago who… you know, had an eye… they closed… 4 or 5 in the first 3 or 4 months. And then their ISA left and generated, you know, started their, started, their own campaign.
And they continued to… you know, sell leads within the first few months, and the site owner's sales dropped off, so… you know, all the AI tools that we can offer, and we're continuing to beef those up, but… There is a human element to it, absolutely.
And I, like, Harry was kind of downplaying, I guess, the social leads. We generally, I recommend a combination of search and social, but just looking at… we're… we're now… now we have visibility into the closures over, like, the last few months, and there's a lot of social in there, too, so it's… it's… and so it… that would be somebody a lead came in and closed. So, those happen too, like, percentage-wise, pretty much the same. So, it's…
And a lot of Bing closings, too. So, I mean, really, like, what this exercise has showed us is that What we always thought happened is happening.
You know, like, all of these networks are valuable if used correctly, and you want someone like Sync.
that… Knows what they're doing to do it. you know, I think our results are… Better than… than competitors. We have 2 minutes, Dan, do you want to talk about seasonality, or…
That's an important point, Harry. Yes. So, as you know, with, lead flow, just over the course of the year, there is seasonality, and,
by quarter by quarter, the number of leads goes down. First quarter's the best, and then it slowly goes down, and then the fourth quarter, it goes down a bit more. And, I always stress about it, it begins, like, the actual biggest decline… there's a couple avenues of decline, it's the… middle of August, which is when the kids… the kiddies return to school, people have stopped looking for houses,
Because they're like, well, the kids are in school, I'm not moving. So, oh well. I'm here another year, alright. And then, so the cost per lead increases then, and then after the, area between, Thanksgiving and Christmas is, the worst period. So… But I was always freaking out about it, and it's… it's not… a huge decline, it's like 10%, maybe 20%, like, based on, like, December versus January. 20% difference. So it's not a huge decline, but… It is… What is happening?
This is the so- this is the social.
Alright. Well, and then Harry's gonna talk about the social… it's not as apparent with the.
No, I'm just showing what you're talking about. Like, this is where we are. And it's this normal, seasonal… boop! That's all. I'm just agreeing. I'm augmenting what you're saying.
James TerryVisually.
Alright, so anyway, so, you're gonna see a small drop in your monthly, Lead flow for the next couple months, and then it will… spike in January. It goes up a lot better, we're better at our jobs in January, as we always say, but actually it's not the case, it's just that we're doing… What we're doing, and, you know, people… it's actually, it's funny.
it's the day after Christmas, there's… the spike begins on the day after Christmas, like, literally on the day after Christmas. And, so… It's… so we… anyway. So that, you have that to look forward to, but then, you know, smooth sailing. It's not as huge… I always, always was…
like, really bummed out about it, like, the decline, oh my gosh, we're doing so, so terribly, and then, like, I've just had some more visibility to what our competitors were getting for cost per lead. It's like, oh, wow, even… that's a lot higher than ours. Even the worst of us is better than the best of theirs. So, that made me feel good.
New slogan. Sync. Even the worst thing we do is better than the best thing they do.
Yes, so… But…
No, I… It is normal, and… This is… I always like looking at this… this chart's always interesting, because it shows how the bottom dropped out. during COVID, And it's slowly come back, but it's still much better than it, this year, it's much better than it was last year. And it's really interesting to me because, you know, the social side, the ads are being served proactively. So, I mean, this really just… Some of it is user behavior, but it also really just indicates competition levels. of…
you know, brick-and-mortar stores closed during COVID. They also shut off their ad spend. More people are at home more, so there's more eyeballs on the site, so CPL really drops. And, you know, competition has just kind of increased back to normal. But this year, with a lot of the stuff that we've done, the cost per lead's actually decreased.
So… But if you look in between, like, in between those gray lines, those gray vertical lines, that's a year. So you can tell… so you can definitely notice the seasonality, and the seasonality, I think, on social is not as extreme as on… actually, it looks like it is as extreme as…
James TerryExtreme, yeah.
But, it's going up, and then it drops off, like, right at the end. Up, and then it drops. It goes up over the course, all the year, except for COVID. All the years, it did the same exact pattern, which is interesting.
James TerryYeah, and here's something that shows that cost per lead. This year, or so far this year, being… Pretty much on par, but actually less than it was in 2022. And I can't think of a lot of things that are less expensive than they were… that are as valuable as leads generated for our clients, that are less expensive than they were in 2022, right? So just, yeah, speaks to how much effort has been made, and how many optimizations that's been done to drive that cost down. It's a good thing.
If you would expand that to the last 10 years, you would see that's probably cheaper than… Like, 2017 or 2017.
James Terry15.
like that. Even though that price of homes has increased, so… By a lot.
Boop.
James TerryThis also does show that 2020 was just the wildest time of lead flow and cost per lead.
Yeah, and then this is just… Just to kind of further put it into perspective, this is from my monthly report, right? The sync CR… the sync CPL did increase month over month, but it's much better than it was. Last year. So… Alright, cool. Well, I think, once I can figure out how to stop sharing my screen…
James TerryI've hit some good notes today, like some high notes.
I got really up there with this SkySlope thing. Has anybody checked on Orlando? He never…
Oh, Jesus.
There's good, Skype.
James TerryI think he had to jump on another… another deal.
Yeah.
James TerrySame as…
Alright, well, I hope he's okay. Well.
James TerryWayland's AI was pulled to another Zoom as well.
Yeah.
James TerryNot even during a low point. Like, Waylon's AI bailed on us, like, when we were talking about something relevant and important. I thought that was.
I would call that a high watermark. High watermark of this, session. That's why the.
Question? Special guest stars today.
Take over. Robots.
I'm sorry, say that one.
Do you have anything to add, Sebastian?
Oh, yeah, you know, I haven't taken a look at the participants list and, and, you know, checked to see who sent in questions, see if any of it overlapped, if there were any questions that we didn't answer. I know we spent a lot of time saying, you know, reach out to your account manager for this, and… but if there's any questions you have that we didn't answer, just… just reach out to support. Support at Syncpro.com, 855-246. It's somewhere in the.
2717.
That's it, 2717, thank you.
He's like, that's not right! I think there's more to it than that.
Yes. Yeah, we'll be happy to, if we can't answer the question, at least point you in the right direction to get it answered. So, yeah, I, I just… yeah. I know there were a couple questions that… that… that maybe came in that, I don't know if the person's here, that we didn't answer it, so…
Yeah, absolutely, reach out, thanks, everybody. For, you know, what is now the 10th Office hours.
They never said it could last.
Clip show, clip show incoming. Clip show in coming. So get ready for that. Best of office hours.
Best of all.
Spin-offs, Dan's gonna have his own. Oh, we are, moving to Spotify. Officially.
Who knows?
We're working on that, so… In case you, you know, can't get enough of looking at our faces, we can talk at you in your car, or on the treadmill, or…
James TerryI think I heard that podcast is now a category at the… is it the Emmys? I want to say, so…
Golden Globes!
James TerryCastroenter.
Not get nominated this time, but I guess.
Yeah.
We're not on Spotify yet, so… I don't know, we'll see.
I just… I just like, pulling up the participants list and watching people leave as we ramble about nonsense an hour and six minutes ago.
talk, the more.
What's up?
trust their people.
Alright, that's enough. That's enough of this. Yeah. So, alright, I guess we should take a cue from that and sign off. Thanks, everybody, for joining. Thanks, James. Thanks, Dan. Thank you, Sebastian. Wealth of great knowledge, really appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, and thank you again, everybody, for joining us. We'll be back next month, the second Wednesday of every month at 11am. So please sign up, send us a question.
And yeah, we really appreciate everybody coming on. Without you guys, we wouldn't have jobs, and… be able to ramble about nonsense, you know, in a Zoom. So, thank you so much! If you love the show, be sure to tell your friends, and… If you don't, you know… Just be quiet about it. Have a great day!
James TerryAppreciate you, Harry. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, everybody.
Oh, yeah.